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The women elected to the 50-member national assembly
in Kuwait are, from left, Aseel alAwadi, Rola Dashti,
Salwa al-Jassar and Massouma al-Mubarak. Women gained
the right to vote and run for office in 2005, but
Islamists urged voters not to elect any.
Women
won four seats in the Kuwaiti parliamentary elections, a
historic first and one of several electoral surprises
that appeared to reflect a deep popular frustration with
the political deadlock in the oil rich gulf state of
Kuwait. The election of four women MPs could help
improve the situation for Christians and other
minorities in the Middle East, said an expert on Islam
and human rights.
“Kuwait itself is usually seen as moderately
'progressive,' and I think this is a big deal,” Dr Paul
Marshall, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute's Center
for Religious Freedom, told The Christian Post.
“If the elected women do a good job, they can open
things up more and the role of women is key in the
Middle East.
“So, I would say that it also bodes well for Christians
and other minorities.”
Last weekend, four women won seats in Kuwait's
parliament despite fierce opposition from some
conservative Muslim quarters. Aseel al Awadhi, one of
the elected women, said Sunni Islamist politicians
called her an “infidel” during the campaign and used
dirty political tricks to defeat her, including taking
her lectures out of context to give the impression she
was against sharia law, she told National Public Radio.
“They created a very intense propaganda campaign, and a
very negative one,” she said.
Awadhi, a US educated philosophy professor at Kuwait
University, said that now that she and her female
colleagues had been elected to parliament, women's
voices can finally be heard.
She also said she plans to challenge laws in Kuwait that
do not treat women equally.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the
elections of the Kuwaiti women a “major step forward”
for Kuwait, the region and the world.
“This did not come easily or quickly,” said Clinton, a
strong women's right advocate, to graduates at Barnard
College, a women's university in New York City,
according to Agence France Presse."It took a long
struggle but the election of four women this Saturday is
a major step forward for Kuwait, the region, and I would
argue, the world," said the US's top diplomat.
Women in Kuwait were not allowed to run for office until
2005. Despite several women running for office in the
previous two elections, no women won a position until
this year.
This historic election occurred after Kuwait's ruler,
Emir Sheikh Sabah al Ahmad al Sabah, dissolved the
outgoing parliament due to a deadlock between parliament
and the government.
Marshall, who has met some of the elected Kuwaiti women
when he was an observer at the country's elections in
2003, commented that the push for women's rights has
come mainly from the country's ruler who is more
“progressive” than the population at large.
“It was he who pushed for women to have the vote, even
though most of the parliament opposed it,” the human
rights scholar said.
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